


Don't know where, Don't know when

by Some_Impossible_Fairytale



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is Not, Crowley is good at staying out of trouble, Cue demon walking on consecrated ground to save his angel, Episode: s01e03 Hard Times, F/F, Fluff and Humor, Historical References, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Ineffable Idiots (Good Omens), M/M, Mild Language, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 13:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20026402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Some_Impossible_Fairytale/pseuds/Some_Impossible_Fairytale
Summary: Crowley is quite enjoying working for British Intelligence in 1941, having convinced Downstairs that he'll work as a double agent within that agency. It just so happens that who he double crosses is his own business.  And then they hear about a rendezvous about some hapless bookseller wandering into what is obviously a Nazi trap and Crowley can't help but wonder at the poor sod. And then Tim slaps a few photographs down on the table of said hapless bookseller and the bottom drops out of Crowley’s stomach.Because it’s his hapless bookseller.





	Don't know where, Don't know when

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic for this fandom but after tumblr talked about Crowley being the one to actually work for British Intelligence, the idea wouldn't leave me alone

_London, 1941_

Working for British Intelligence had been ridiculously easy for Crowley to convince his lot that he was better placed to do than heading over to Germany, considering they’ve never twigged regarding the amount of lies he’s told over the past five thousand years at this point and they’re own spiel about demons not supposed to be trusting each other. So he’d spun some rubbish about infiltrating their agencies as a double agent for Hell and All the Forces of Darkness so he could actually work to stop those Nazi shits without being interrupted. Plus, there’s the fact that he’s actually lived in England way back since Camelot and whilst humans don’t tend to notice an awful lot, he does think they’d notice some English bloke trying to infiltrate Nazi Germany, even if Hastur hasn’t got a fucking clue about…well anything really.

He’d also taken the precaution of giving himself a first and second name decades ago which had proven it’s worth with all these papers nowadays. Well, strictly speaking its only an initial really, if he’s being wholly honest, because if anyone from downstairs finds out he’s out there doing good in the world, then he’s well and truly up the proverbial. Whereas if anyone hears about Anthony J. Crowley causing problems, Crowley can always just claim slander, because it’s not like anyone would expect a demon to have a _Christian _name is it?

Crowley, to his own surprise, finds he actually enjoys working with these humans too. They’re lovely, brilliant, clever people and slowly, but surely, inching their way towards victory. Working in the Intelligence department had been the place where Crowley felt he was actually to be of the most use, anyway, after assisting with as many evacuation placements as he could. The department has discovered that Anthony is rather talented, and he’s still not used to that name, didn’t think he could get away with using it. The first time he’d said it decades ago, he’d half expected the Almighty to appear and smite him for the presumption. But nothing had happened. Just a strange little flutter, which was by all account rather pleasurable, whenever anybody said it. Anyway, Anthony as Susan, Tim, Jack, Henry, Angela and Lara all call him, has always been very good at minimising casualties.

In fact, as Henry has taken to announcing when Tony’s out of the room, he’s a Godsend. The reason Henry only ever compliments the red headed man in this way when he’s absent, is because the one time he’d done it in front of Anthony, Crowley had shoved him up against the wall and told him to never use those words in his hearing ever again because he was surely not sent from God, and that this horrific series of events should never have happened in the first place and what was the point, especially after last time and they hadn’t seen him from the rest of the day after he’d stormed out of the office.

(Crowley had, on that particular Monday, gone home to get stupendously drunk, at remembering life in the trenches during that first time)

He would have gone to Aziraphale…. His thoughts drift to the angel, as they have for a while, and he wonders what the ethereal being is doing right this minute. Shaking his head, as if to clear it, as if it were that easy Crowley tries to be as cold as he felt that day in St. James Park. So yes, alright he would got to Aziraphale’s bookshop for company, but he hadn’t seen the angel in a hundred years, since Aziraphale felt they shouldn’t be _fraternizing _and Go-, damna-, **fuck ** how Crowley hated that term, because they were on ‘Opposite Sides’. That had hurt, that. Crowley had tried to tell himself that was proof, that he shouldn’t love Aziraphale, that he shouldn’t care about the angel. Crowley’s never really been a good liar. The truth always does far more damage, as his blackened wings attest.

Therefore, he had no idea what the angel was doing, but at the very least, from the odd occasion he had driven past the bookshop to check that the lights were still on and door locked, he knew Aziraphale was still <strike>safe</strike>, in London.

So, when they’re all sitting round the table, listening to Tim read out the latest briefing about a rendezvous between blackmailing, murderous Nazis who they have not yet had the opportunity to apprehend and some hapless bookseller who is apparently labouring under the misapprehension that Greta Kleinschmidt works for British Intelligence and has still not worked out he’s walking straight into a trap, Crowley can’t help but wonder at the poor sod. They’ve _never_ set a trap in a church, not only because most of them in London are used as shelters; for air raids or their homeless victims, but also because consecrated ground bloody well hurts to walk on.

But then Tim slaps a few photographs down on the table of said hapless bookseller and the bottom drops out of Crowley’s stomach. Because it’s _his _hapless bookseller. Crowley stares in blank horror through his sunglasses, and no matter how hard he tries, it’s still Aziraphale’s trusting smile and that seriously outdated coat staring back at him, walking alongside this Greta bitch.

Crowley’s head hits the desk just a touch too fast to past for human, but he doesn’t notice, quite simply, the only groan escaping him one of evident and significant annoyance. _Angel, what in the world have you walked into now?!_ He thinks as loudly as he possibly can, hoping that Aziraphale can hear him even despite the fact that neither of them have showed any aptitude for telepathy in the past.

For several seconds Crowley’s attempts to formulate speech announces itself as a distressed sort of gurgling. Susan, sat next to him, begins to wonder if he’s having a stroke. Gently, she puts one hand on Crowley’s shoulder and only just manages to hold back a bloodcurdling and wholly un-British screech at the way the man bolts upright at the touch and the re-admittance into Crowley’s consciousness of his awareness of the fact that he had an audience.

“Which church?” Crowley croaks eventually, raising his head to look at Tim who casts an eye over the dossier and gabbles “St. Duncan’s” as quickly as he can manage, more disturbed by the look of utter fear on Anthony’s normally unshakeable features – it would appear this Mr. Fell is a friend of Anthony’s and normally, they’d send an agent from another division – conflict of interest and all that, but Mr. Crowley doesn’t seem to give two figs about all that.

“I’ll go, I'll go, he’ll only get everyone else killed and then himself else” he mutters, already on his feet, hat in hand. He dives out of the door of the tiny office.

“but Tony – surely you-“ Angela doesn’t get a chance to finish asking whether Crowley intends to take on at least three Nazis by himself even though he’s somehow walked away from worse she knows, because he disappears almost in the blink of an eye.

Crowley clatters down seven flights of stairs, too nervous to waste time waiting for the lift because they’ve cut this one so close, and it reminds Crowley of 1793 – he’d only just made it in time then too, and that was with commandeering a boat in the middle of a revolution and rowing like a madman - but that’s sweet Aziraphale all over, he doesn’t see the danger until he’s already standing in the middle of it. Honestly, he takes his eye off the angel for a couple of decades and the man practically signs himself up for martyrdom and for Heav-, for Sata- **for fuck’s sake there’s another fucking war going on here!**

No, the Angel’s too busy seeing good in others that just isn’t there for that. Crowley breaks out onto the dark, deserted street and his beloved Bentley is there, waiting faithfully.

It’s short work to find St. Duncan’s and by the time Crowley flings the car into what cannot even loosely be defined as a parking space, a plan has already taken shape in his mind. A great plan. Generally, Crowley prefers his infernal interferences into humanity to have finesse rather than the black and blood approach of his colleagues downstairs, after all what better way to tempt humans than to have them never realise you’re slowly shunting them by the daily nudges Crowley’s ideas provide towards hellish intent?

But not today. No, today, Crowley’s reached the end of his non-existent tether. These – they didn’t leave survivors he knows that much from surveillance already and they - they had Aziraphale, and they would – even if they didn’t, the fact that they dared breathe the same air- so no, today he’s just going to blow these Nazis straight to hell and skip the paperwork.

It’s not as if they don’t deserve it.

And if they manage to get away, they won’t get far.

So that’s when he shoves the door open and steps inside. Immediately, he remembers the burning sensation that had happened the last time he’d done this, when he’d nipped into Rome again a couple of centuries ago and been talked into going to see the Sistine Chapel, if only to cheer up Michaelangelo, who had been threatening to gouge his own eyes out with a paintbrush.

Ooh. Aha. Crowley hops from one foot the other and finds that the searing heat coming through his shoes is manageable, if only just, like overriding the urge to drop a hot plate. If that hot plate had just shot out of Vesuvius on a particular day in 79 AD. (Crowley had not been in Italy when that happened, but he had been at Sodom. He could imagine what those twenty thousand people had thought that last day. He could remember the expression still etched on lovely, **_human_** Ado’s face of salt like it was yesterday. So it goes.)

Quickly striding as awkwardly as possible through the vestibule, Crowley can hear voices coming from within including yes, Aziraphale, his melodious voice protesting loudly about his impending disincorporation, which is entirely fair really. Even now, Crowley can remember how Heaven gets about body counts, and leaving one dead in a church of all places will not make things easier on poor Aziraphale in his efforts to get back to Earth.

Kicking the door open, Crowley hurries through and makes his way into the church proper, immediately spotting Aziraphale with his golden curls and favourite coat by the altar staring down a gun barrel and promptly barrelling down the aisle towards him.

Except, each step is excruciating, try as he might to ignore it. _Fuckfuckahhhhshitbuggerbugger_

This shouldn’t even – **_fuck_, **that one had really hurt, trying to regain his balance Crowley had spent too long on his left foot – this shouldn’t even hurt because he’s a demon, he’s been in boiling sulphur never mind, ahaha, walking on consecrated ground.

Plus hot footing, quite literally, is hardly his carefully cultivated devil-doesn’t-give-a shit swagger that has people spilling their secrets before he’s even said hello. “Oh! Sorry, consecrated ground! It’s like..being at the beach in bare feet!”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley doesn’t know if the angel is glad to see him, surprised or horrified.

“Stopping **you** getting into trouble” He shoots back, and its true. Enough. If Aziraphale got a rude note for being frivolous in 1793, Crowley doesn’t even want to think about what he’ll get into if Gabriel, the little shit, finds out he’s been aiding the Nazis. And Gabriel won’t care if Aziraphale did it unknowingly or not.

“I should of known. Of course! These people are working for you”

Yup, that’s his angel, grabbing the wrong end of the flaming sword as per usual.

“_No” _Crowley enunciates because he has both common sense not to mention **taste**_,_ they’re a bunch of half-witted Nazi spies running around London blackmailing and murdering people. I just” –ahaha – “didn’t want to see you embarrassed” Getting discorporated by falling for Nazi bullshit, he could see the headlines in both _The Infernal Times_ and Heaven's newspaper now

“Mr. Anthony J. Crowley! Your fame precedes you”

“Anthony?” Aziraphale’s voice pulls Crowley from his thoughts, and he watches as the angel tastes the name in his mouth.

“You don’t like it?” He asks, and its as if no time has passed at all, no ugly misunderstanding in St James Park, as if he’s asking after Aziraphale’s chosen meal over the dinner table, 4000 years of them, after taking the first bite. He’s always wondered what Aziraphale would think of Crowley’s chosen first name. Perhaps, in hindsight, it was a little silly, but he had thought the meaning appropriate at the time. Look at all the commendations he’d gotten for what humanity had thought up themselves, without any of his interference whatsoever! Maybe they can think of another one.

“No, no I didn’t say that. I’ll get used to it” Oh. Oh, good then. No, not good. What was another word for good? Fitting? Yeah, fitting’ll do.

“The famous Mr Crowley” says pretty Greta the Bitch “Such a shame you must both die” As if, love, for a start. Still, Crowley touches the brim of his hat in salutation. Good. The buggers should know his name. All these Nazi shits were going to hell anyway, maybe downstairs would be pleased he was sending a few on early anyway. What had that Shakespeare bloke said, hell is empty all the devils are here? Too bloody right. Apparently, it was like watching paint dry down there, and that was outside the designated area of Hall Three for that torture. Now that would be a commendation he could actually be proud of.

“What does the ‘J’ stand for?”

“Uh, a, it’s just a ‘J’, really” Because of course Aziraphale focuses on the devil in the detail.

After Crowley blows the place to Kingdom Come, or thereabouts, and Aziraphale shields them from the blast, Crowley picks his way across the bricks, and it hurts still, because although there is no church now, the ground upon which it rested remains heavenly, and wrests the bag of books free from the dead man’s hand. He knew Aziraphale would forget. His angel, still absent minded as ever.

He had also made sure that that lectern had survived. He’d come back for that, in the morning, mentally constructing a ‘do not disturb’ aura around the item, so that any pilfering human wouldn’t even notice it nested amongst the rest of the ruins.

“Little demonic miracle of my own” he murmurs, in a definitely _not_ kind voice, or any other four letter word Aziraphale might choose to use. Because the angel doesn’t know about the other four letter word, the thing that Crowley swears is what drives this body forward, how he ends up rushing into danger if only to keep Aziraphale out of it. He tries not to focus on the way their hands brush, that after a hundred years, Aziraphale’s smooth skin is what grounds Crowley, that the danger had passed them by, because Aziraphale was still his friend, after everything.

“Lift home?” he asks, although it isn’t really a question, and he’s delighted to hear Aziraphale start scrambling over the ruins after him, asking what sort of transportation he has. Crowley gestures proudly at his beautiful Bentley, introducing the two most important things in his life to each other.

“I got in her in 1926, straight off the production line.” He grins, heading for the driver’s door. Aziraphale pauses by the bonnet, one hand on the headlight. “Well? Get in, angel, I’ve got a debrief in the morning”

Aziraphale gives himself a little wiggle and Crowley shouldn’t find his hesitancy adorable but he slips around and opens the passenger door for the angel. “It’s beautiful. She’s beautiful” Aziraphale sighs once he finally clambers in. The radio that had miraculously slotted itself into the Bentley in 1930 when such things began to appear, started to play Gershwin softly.

“She likes you” Crowley notes, more to himself than Aziraphale. As she bloody well should. She was a good car, after all. They drive in silence, not catching up until Crowley confirms that Aziraphale is still running the bookshop, even though he already knows the angel still does. (What Crowley did not know, and still doesn’t, is that Aziraphale’s hesitancy upon first officially meeting the Bentley was because he had seen this car many a time whizzing past his shop at all hours, but never stopping and had been quietly coming to terms with the fact that the demon had never forsaken him after all, along with stepping onto holy ground and something more reassuring and far more enlightening in the satchel of books between his knees than books of prophecy)

They stop outside the bookshop, and Aziraphale stirs himself enough from his reflections to realise that if he gets out of the car, as one is supposed to do, when it stops, then the normalcy of this night might be over. And he does not know when they’ll get it again. “Won’t you come in, for a glass of wine?” He tries to sound casual, as if merely pointing out that the demon’s shoe was untied, but the 1940’s leave a taste of wistful longing in the mouth that even Aziraphale can’t get away from.

“Wine?” Crowley smiles, and it’s a smile Aziraphale remembers from a Roman tavern and the walls of Eden. A rogue recognising a rogue. “Bit of a luxury isn’t it, what with all the rationing?” he teases

And really, there’s no need for that “Luxury items aren’t difficult to import, dear boy” Now, that’s a fact, the Savoy sets the example in this department, wine, champagne, all sitting in those stores, pate, they could have oysters again, if they wished. Every time those bright, young people sank another cocktail they were sticking two fingers up to Hitler and Crowley could appreciate that. And if, tonight, Susan, Tim, Jack and Henry find bottles of Tattinger of all things mysteriously in their larders then good for them. Angela and Lara happen to find two in their own, but then, Crowley’s always been very protective of the girls as he calls them. “Lead on, angel”

One bottle of wine, turns into two, then three, then introducing Aziraphale to the real British counter-intelligence the morning after over tea and dry ration biscuits. The end of the war. Years, decades, and then comes the other war, the End Times, and Aziraphale is still right there, the angel at his shoulder, as he has always been. Their first kiss, that first night, together, wholly, holy-ily maybe even in a way Hell and Heaven have forgotten about but God when She sees is pleased these two have always remembered, unwatched by anyone else, a luxury these humans have had since time immemorial mostly. And, Crowley thinks to himself over the rim of his sunglasses as Aziraphale potters about with the tea things and Anathema counts loudly into her hands from where she’s leaning on the apple tree at the bottom of the garden as the children and Newt rush to hide outside of a cottage in the South Downs, the songs are true, that sometimes, despite everything you might go through, you get to come home at the end of everything. And begin again.

**Author's Note:**

> The name Anthony actually means 'highly praiseworthy', which just breaks my heart, because Crowley chose that name for himself, because that's what he wishes he was. 
> 
> I also loved the idea of Crowley being at Sodom and his heart breaking over Ado, Lot's wife. He references this quote by Vonnegut  
"And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.  
So she was turned into a pillar of salt.  
So it goes"


End file.
